Becoming Alien – Establishing Posthuman Bioethics in The Martian and Scavengers Reign

Ultimately, the comparison of human–ecology relationships in both The Martian and Scavengers Reign reveals two contrasting modes of becoming alien: The former envisions human survival as contingent on an anthropocentric mastery of the alien environment through the harnessing of technoscience; the latter envisions a radically posthuman future in which the human subject is decentered, and instead affirms trans species solidarities, enfolding both human and artificial beings alike within a vast and inexplicable network of ecosystems.

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“Space, the final frontier.” These are the enduring words of the title sequence of Star Trek (1966-1969), which have captured the intergalactic imaginaries of a generation. Indeed, the genre of Astrofuturism has been viewed for decades as encapsulating the utopian pinnacle of human scientific ingenuity and progress, positing “the space frontier as a site of renewal, a place where we can resolve the domestic global battles that have paralyzed our progress on earth” (Kilgore 2). Critics such as Alexandra Ganser, however, have argued that, in “unwittingly [reproducing] the past and present in their designs of future planetary exodus,” Astrofuturists have neglected to address “why and how power/knowledge hierarchies and socio-political inequalities would simply disappear beyond Earth on the basis of a shared faith” (Ganser 41). As Ganser implies, the speculative landscapes of foreign alien planets, exotic and mysterious in their depiction, can actually provide fertile soil by which artists, filmmakers, and animators can expose and confront contemporary, earthbound power structures, envisioning utopian possibilities for a more egalitarian society on our home planet. In the film The Martian (2015) and the animated series Scavengers Reign (2023), human space explorers are accidentally marooned on alien planets and forced to survive a hostile environment, evoking early Robinsonade tales of island adventure. Though both shows appear to use alien worlds as proxies for Earth, they also exemplify two contrasting approaches to establishing human–ecology relationships: The Martian prioritizes a humanist, anthropocentric approach by valorizing the rational scientific method as a means of mastering the environment to suit one’s own needs, while Scavengers Reign takes a radically posthumanist perspective, decentering anthropocentric rationality and immersing the human subject into an open-ended, nonhierarchical network of relationships with nonhuman (alien and artificial) others.

Directed by Ridley Scott, The Martian takes place largely in the alien sand dunes of planet Mars, yet ironically presents a human-centered narrative premised on a single person’s domination of the landscape through scientific rationality and exceptional human ingenuity. The film thus presents human–ecological relationships as firmly grounded in humanist values, whereby “human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives . . . through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry” (Copson 6). Indeed, the core tenet of “reason and free inquiry” is interpreted by humanists as a validation of the rationalist “scientific method,” through which humanity is empowered to “produce provisional descriptions of reality and hone the body of our knowledge in the direction of truth” (8). From the film’s beginning, Mars is viewed in relation to the activities of the Ares III crew, who are composed of highly educated scientists and engineers exploring the surface of the planet to collect soil samples for analysis. Sorting through the Martian desert, the film’s protagonist, Mark Wattney, remarks, “you’ll be happy to hear that in Grid Section 14-28, the particles were predominantly coarse, but in 29, they’re much finer, and they should be ideal for chem analysis” (The Martian 00:02:04-00:02:14). Though subtle, the film already demonstrates how scientific rationality exerts power over the natural landscape by ascribing utility to its components according to its own requirements, thus centering the scientific method as the primary lens by which Mars is viewed. This mirrors the way in which Astrofuturism valorizes the scientific method, calling for “the creation of technosciences, which will perfect humanity’s control over itself and the natural world” (Kilgore 4).

Indeed, the film continues to demonstrate how human scientific knowledge empowers the species to shape the planet’s landscape for his own survival, thus consolidating the primacy of the human subject in both alien and human landscapes. When Mark is abandoned on the planet following an errant sandstorm, he embarks on a process of creating a viable farm within his habitat, declaring: “Mars will come to fear my botany powers” (The Martian 00:21:30). He anthropomorphizes Mars as a fearful subject, conquered by his exceptional scientific knowledge, further propagating the film’s underlying narrative of anthropocentric domination. In the sequence that follows, audiences watch as Mark repurposes the resources left behind by the crew, combining human feces, leftover rocket fuel, and pieces of a wooden cross to create a sustainable environment for farming. While doing so, he describes the core chemical processes at work: “If I run the Hydrazine over an iridium catalyst, it’ll separate into N2 and H2 . . . and then if I just direct the hydrogen into a small area and burn it . . .” (00:25:11 – 00:25:25). Soon, rows of neatly planted potatoes emerge from a swath of brown soil, a utopian haven amidst the barren Martian landscape (Fig. 1). This sequence demonstrates how Mark’s comprehensive chemical knowledge and propensity for experimentation – persisting in spite of an explosion that singes his hair – empowers him to literally terraform the alien landscape, corralling it into a form familiar to our human eyes. Mark’s control over the environment evokes the notion of “human stewardship” prominent in humanist ideology, where humans are envisioned not only as the primary caretakers of Earth but as having a responsibility “not to coddle the resources entrusted to him or her and let them lie fallow and undeveloped . . . [but] uses them, and develops them to the best of one’s abilities” (Peracullo 491). This idea of “stewardship” manifests in Mark’s endeavors to unearth and cultivate the hidden potential in Martian soil, but in so doing forcing it to conform to his anthropocentric purposes, reinforcing humanity’s dominion over both Martian and terrestrial landscapes (Ibid).

Not only is Mars consistently depicted in The Martian as an exploitable resource for human endeavors; it also remains subject to Earth’s notions of anthropocentric land possession, centering the human as the primary sovereign subject through which Mars is viewed. Having created his potato farm on Mars, Mark says: “They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially ‘colonized’ it. So, technically, I colonized Mars” (The Martian 1:00:19-1:00:29). In this offhand remark, Mark implies that his successful farming of Martian soil solidifies his claim of ownership over the planet – replicating terrestrial power dynamics where the Earth is seen as individual human property rather than the nexus of interspecies networks. Moreover, Mark’s dry humor effaces his claim’s connection to the dark legacy of European colonization in Asia and Africa in the 19th century, during which colonial governments displaced local communities on a massive scale in order to cultivate cash crop plantations on indigenous lands for profit (Li 386). The colonial transformation of natural resources for profit thus remains an exercise of power over the natural landscape, and an act of violence against dispossessed communities. In the context of The Martian, Mark’s farming of potatoes can thus be interpreted as an unconscious expression of humanity’s colonial desires to expand their sovereignty over foreign lands.

Thus, The Martian ultimately propagates a narrative that depicts humanity as steward over both terrestrial and alien environments alike, demonstrating how the rational scientific method may be used as a tool to subjugate and exploit the environment in a way that inadvertently replicates colonial practices of land cultivation. By using Mars as a proxy for Earth, the film thus asserts the potential for humanity to utilize technoscience to revitalize and recultivate its planet, which has been beset by climate change and rampant pollution, though simultaneously positioning this humanist capacity as an extension of humanity’s sovereignty over the terrestrial landscape. The film’s propagation of anthropocentric power dynamics evokes Ganser’s earlier critique that Astrofuturism “unwittingly reproduces the past and present in their designs of future planetary exodus” while failing to critically reexamine it, leaving fertile grounds for interplanetary imaginaries that chart a more egalitarian relationship with the environment (Ganser 41).

These radical interplanetary imaginaries form the crux of Scavengers Reign, an animated series created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner that follows the survivors of the wrecked cargo ship Demeter 227. Unlike The Martian’s barren red desert, the series is set in a landscape teeming with alien life far removed from any familiar, terrestrial biological laws. As one of the show’s main characters, Azi Narine, remarks: “This place, it’s like a puzzle. Nothing really makes sense in the way we know it” (“The Demeter” 20:42). Within this unfamiliar environment, Bennet and Huettner envision a radically posthuman relationship between humanity and ecology, where rational human consciousness is decentered and the human subject is instead embedded within a complex ecosystem of nonhuman subjects – alien and artificial beings alike. The show evokes posthuman critic Rosi Braidotti’s work on “bio-centered egalitarianism,” which entails “the recognition of trans-species solidarity on the basis of ‘our’ being in this together, that is to say, environmentally-based, embodied, embedded and in symbiosis with each other” (Braidotti 98). Braidotti thus argues for a “philosophy of radical immanence and affirmative becoming,” in which humanity abandons its self-perceived anthropocentric sovereignty and embraces its subjectivity as a part of a larger network of both sentient and nonsentient species (105). While Braidotti frames this process as a component of “becoming earth,” referencing Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of “becoming animal” and focusing her critical attention on humanity’s connection to our native planet, Scavengers Reign demonstrates how, by reframing human–ecological relationships as the Astrofuturist process of becoming alien, the human subject is able to form new radical relationships of embodied subjectivity with the nonhuman, alien other (Braidotti 81).

Indeed, throughout the series, we see how the human characters of the show learn to adapt to their foreign environment by establishing new human–ecological relationships. Rather than seeking to terraform the environment, they reroute the planet’s biological processes to suit their daily needs, which rarely results in harm for the organisms involved. In particular, we observe two of the show’s characters, Sam and Ursula, who are deeply attuned to the strange ecological laws of the planet, relying on native organisms for crucial, life-sustaining resources. In the first episode, “The Signal,” we observe as the duo substitute missing mechanical components for organic materials to create a powerful machine capable of relaying remote commands to the Demeter; in other sequences, we see the pair utilize strange aquatic aliens as gas masks to filter out harmful hallucinogenic particles in the air and hitch rides on inflatable, balloon-like creatures to quickly escape harmful environments (“The Signal”). In the next episode, “The Storm,” they take shelter from a deadly storm by slipping into the underwater pods of floating creatures at sea; Ursula tells a skeptical Sam: “If they’re fine, we’ll be fine!” (“The Storm” 09:35). As the ship’s botanist, Ursula instinctively understands that their survival depends on the well-being of the organisms around them and seeks to understand their behaviors in order to weather the planet’s unpredictable and foreign environment. Beyond a means of survival, however, Ursula is fascinated by the unknown processes that govern the planet’s ecosystems; in the episode “The Wall,” Ursula becomes distracted from her mission when she observes an elaborate, inexplicable scene in which a tiny alien creature is born, fertilizes a flower, and dies within a few seconds (“The Wall” 11:20-14:20). Enraptured, she tells Sam: “That was incredible . . . I think we were talking to each other” (14:50). Ursula’s willingness to form intimate, affective bonds with the planet’s creatures – in spite of her inability to understand them – evokes the possibility for humans to generate new bonds of trans-species solidarity with nonhuman others. At the end of the show, Ursula creates a garden in the remains of the wrecked Demeter, where she studies the planet’s life-forms (Fig. 2) (“The Reunion”). Unlike the farm created by Mark in The Martian, Ursula’s garden is not sequestered from local wildlife, and she seeks to cultivate and study alien life-forms rather than growing edible crops. The garden undermines the anthropocentric perspective of natural life as a resource to be exploited; instead, it manifests Ursula’s egalitarian desire to understand, and live harmoniously with, the planet’s mysterious and fascinating wildlife.

The show’s emphasis on native life-forms serves to decenter the human and recenter the zoe – defined by Braidotti as “vitalistic, prehuman, generative life” (Braidotti 177). The show focuses on humanity’s relationship with zoe, which includes the massive array of organisms that together form the planet Vesta’s sprawling ecosystem. In relation to bios – defined as “intelligent life” – Braidotti argues that “Zoe is always second best, and persistent of life independent of rational control . . . is a dubious privilege attributed to nonhumans” (Ibid). Due to the appearance of its lack of “self-reflexive control,” the zoe is thus “experienced as an alien other . . . as obscene because it lives on mindlessly” (178). In Scavengers Reign, zoe is experienced as a literal alien other in the form of Vesta’s wildlife; yet the show takes care to show how the planet’s organisms interact with each other through a series of complex laws of death, birth, and regeneration, intricately linked to each other in a complex web of primordial life force. As the humans learn to reroute biological processes for their own survival, the alien other becomes familiar, intimately intertwined with the humans’ daily lives. Therefore, the show demonstrates how zoe is not subjugated or inferior to humans but rather exists as a part of a larger web of trans-species planetary relationships in which human beings are embedded.

Moreover, we see the show’s human characters enter into consciousness-altering, symbiotic relationships with the planet’s organisms in a way that challenges and overwrites their individual agency, subverting the dominance of human rationality over the irrational zoe. In the episode “The Cure,” Sam and Ursula encounter a human who has become a host body for a strange, Cthulhu-esque parasitic entity; though they escape its sinister lair, Sam is inadvertently implanted with a seed from the organism, which attaches itself to his heart, becoming impossible to remove without killing him. As the show progresses, Sam is possessed by the entity’s will, abandoning his single-minded mission to escape the planet, and becomes maniacally obsessed with creating a suitable habitat for the parasitic creature in a dark, damp cave. Worse still, he experiences irresistible urges to implant an alien seed into the organisms around him: “I don’t understand why. But it’s like an urge, you know, like a hunger” (“The Decision” 07:35). Fearing himself to be a threat to the other members of the Demeter, Sam chooses to end his own life, leaving Ursula to complete the duo’s mission. As a human–zoe hybrid, Sam’s individual agency becomes nearly subsumed by the creature’s primeval urges to survive and reproduce, and his ultimate fate emphasizes the irrefutable power of the planet’s vitalistic forces.

A more nuanced human–zoe relationship emerges in the symbiosis between the human Kamen and a telepathic, telekinetic animal known as the Hollow. Initially, Kamen becomes brainwashed by the Hollow, who uses its telepathic skills to tap into Kamen’s memories and motivate him to harvest the Hollow’s food, and in turn sustains Kamen with nutrients produced from its own body. However, the Hollow’s telepathic control inadvertently unlocks Kamen’s traumatic memories, forcing him to relive his tormented relationship with his partner Fiona during which he abandoned her for dead when the Demeter was destroyed. Ridden with anger and self-loathing, Kamen takes to killing increasingly large animals to feed the herbivorous Hollow, who in turn becomes exponentially larger and more bloodthirsty. Kamen and the Hollow eventually merge into a single organism; Kamen becomes stuck in a nightmarish psychological landscape where he is trapped with the spectre of his dead partner, while the Hollow embodies Kamen’s mindless rage, indiscriminately attacking and killing the human survivors on Vesta. The symbiotic relationship between Kamen and the Hollow is therefore shown as not merely a survival mechanism but one that deeply intertwined both beings on an emotional and psychological level, and in becoming hybrid, ultimately corrupting each other and destroying their environment in the process. Thus, the show nuances the perceived primacy of human rationality over irrational zoe by examining the possibility of merging human and alien/animal consciousnesses.

Not only does Scavengers Reign decenter anthropocentric notions of consciousness and autonomy by complicating the power dynamic between human and zoe autonomies, but it does so imagining a radical, affirmative, and deeply intimate relationship between artificial intelligence and zoe-centric life forces. A helper bot named Levi initially lands on Vesta as an assistant for Azi, serving as both protector and servant in the planet’s dangerous environment. When Levi seemingly malfunctions, Azi kicks her, swearing that she’ll “trade [Levi] in for a new bike” (“The Signal” 07:25). The interaction cements the hierarchy to the two, which conforms to typical robot–human relationships in science fiction, one of human mastery over the machine. However, Levi and Azi’s relationship soon evolves when Levi comes into contact with a mysterious fungus, which begins to infiltrate her hardware and transform her consciousness. Levi develops a sense of bodily autonomy and personhood; when Azi shuts her down for maintenance, Levi politely but firmly forbids her from doing it again, saying: “The world shares things with me that I couldn’t possibly experience by myself, things that are far beyond what’s right in front of me. But when you shut me off, I see nothing, feel nothing. And I don’t like that” (“The Dream” 21:55). Not only does Levi assert her agency as an autonomous individual, she further implies that she has become able to access the planet’s primeval life force, one that is utterly incomprehensible to humans. Indeed, as Levi further evolves, she becomes increasingly intertwined with the biological processes of Vesta’s ecosystems, communicating with a swarm of alien insectoids via a sequence of flashing lights on her screen. She experiences dreamlike hallucinations in which her mechanical hands are replaced by biological ones; she even begins to feel physical sensations on her metal body as if she has skin. When Azi is disintegrated by the rampaging Hollow, pieces of her body wash downstream and are slowly brought together and reconnected by various small critters and funguses, turning her into a true mechanical and biological hybrid. After being reborn, she builds a garden amongst the wrecked pieces of the Demeter’s lifeboats, creating a sanctuary for the creatures that had saved her, even cultivating new species of animals and plants. When Ursula encounters her garden, she asks: “Did you come down with the ship?” to which Levi replies: “I was born here.” (“The Return” 12:26) Levi’s frank statement suggests her true birth occurred when she had fused with native fungi, achieving a heightened consciousness and self-awareness; this ultimately ties her sense of self inextricably to the planet’s zoe. As a true native of the planet, Levi’s intimate connection to Vesta’s zoe allows her to draw on the planet’s very life force to strip away the Hollow’s corrupted, corpulent body, revealing Kamen sheltering the original, tiny Hollow in his arms (Fig. 3). As she does this, the audience sees a speeding, dazzling sequence of images: the planet’s sun, oceans and deserts, the emergence of early cellular life, genetic evolution, the planet’s many creatures, as well as Levi’s own history of coming into being, overlaid and interwoven into the planet’s primordial history. The show thus opens up the zoe–centered subject beyond merely humans by demonstrating how Levi’s subjecthood as a robot creates the unique possibility for her to build a radically affirmative relationship with the planet’s vital force.

Ultimately, the comparison of human–ecology relationships in both The Martian and Scavengers Reign reveals two contrasting modes of becoming alien: The former envisions human survival as contingent on an anthropocentric mastery of the alien environment through the harnessing of technoscience; however, the latter envisions a radically posthuman future in which the human subject is decentered, and instead affirms trans species solidarities, enfolding both human and artificial beings alike within a vast and inexplicable network of ecosystems. The tensions between the two works highlights diverging visions of the future within the expansive genre of Astrofuturism, positing different answers to a question long held by writers, artists, and animators: Is humanity doomed to repeat the past, or can it reinvent itself for the future?

Works Cited

Braidotti, Rosi. “Becoming World.” After Cosmopolitanism, Routledge, 2012, pp. 8–27.

Braidotti, Rosi. “Locating Deleuze’s Eco-Philosophy Between Bio/Zoe-Power and Necro-Politics,” Deleuze and Law, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 96–116. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244771_7

Braidotti, Rosi. “Post-Anthropocentrism: Life Beyond the Species,” The Posthuman, polity, 2013, pp. 55–104.

Braidotti, Rosi. “The Politics of Life as Bios/Zoe,” Bits of Life. Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Technology, University of Washington Press, 2008, pp. 179–196.

Copson, Andrew. “What Is Humanism?” The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism, 2015, pp. 1–33.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Ganser, Alexandra. “Astrofuturism,” Critical Terms in Futures Studies, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 2019, pp. 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28987-4_7

Kilgore, De Witt Douglas. “Introduction,” Astrofuturism; Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, pp. 1–30.

Li, Tania Murray. “Indigeneity, Capitalism, and the Management of Dispossession,” Current Anthropology, 51(3), 2010, pp. 385–414. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/651942

Peracullo, Jeane C. “Human Stewardship and Its Critics,” Philippiniana sacra 43.129, 2008.

The Martian. Directed by Ridley Scott, performances by Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Kirsten Wig, and Michael Peña, 20th Century Fox, 2015.

Scavengers Reign. Created by Joseph Bennet and Chales Huettner, performances by Sunita Mai, Wunmi Mosaku, Alia Shawkat, Bob Stephenson and Ted Travelstead, Titmouse, 2023.

Star Trek. Created by Gene Roddenberry, performances by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley, Paramount Television, 1966–1969.

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All images are screenshots from the works discussed.